The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to wireless communications via a mesh network. Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time-division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Mobile devices (and other wireless communication devices) may form networks without base stations or equipment other than the mobile devices themselves. One example of such networks is known as a mesh network. In order for a device to join a mesh network, the device must “peer” with the member devices of the mesh network. The member devices (peers) may use a secure password-based authentication and key establishment protocol called “Simultaneous Authentication of Equals” (SAE) to peer. When the device wishing to join and each of the member devices discover each other (and security is enabled), the device wishing to join performs a separate SAE exchange with each of the member devices. If SAE completes successfully, each peer knows the other party possesses the mesh password and, as a by-product of the SAE exchange, the device wishing to join establishes a cryptographically strong key with each of the member devices. The joining device, once the SAE exchange completes successfully, learns the topology of the mesh network as well as the route to a provider device based on each of the member devices it has peered with.
However, problems for mesh networks result from such conventional secure peering. First, conventional peering involves an exchange of many messages with each individual member device of the mesh network in order to join the network. Overhead associated with maintaining state information for each peer in the mesh network may also reduce the overall performance of devices in the network. Second, the joining device must complete the peering procedure with every member device of the mesh network in order to learn the mesh network topology and determine a route to a member device providing a service, e.g., access to the internet.